


If I Could Tell Her

by theonewhereshewrites



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: "it looked pretty cool when you put indigo streaks in your hair", Based on a Dear Evan Hansen Song, Extremely Out Of Character, F/M, One Shot, Oops, Songfic, bc i'm a broadway slut, just go with it, michelle & peter admit their feelings, ned and may are mentioned like once but i tagged them anyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 14:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16725111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonewhereshewrites/pseuds/theonewhereshewrites
Summary: In which Peter Parker finds himself alone on a roof with Michelle Jones, and before he knows what he's saying, he's word vomiting and admitting how Ned feels about her. Except, it's not really how Ned feels about her at all, it's how he feels.“Ned thinks you’re awesome,” he found himself blurting, a blush creeping up his neck.“He thinks I’m awesome? Ned?” she questioned as she tucked a loose curl behind her ear.“Definitely!” Peter chirped out in response, voice cracking, unable to back out of the conversation now.“How?” she probed, her expression unreadable.“Well,” Peter began, running his hand through the hair at the back of his neck before continuing, “he said there’s nothing like your smile, sort of subtle and perfect, and real.”Based on If I Could Tell Her from the musical Dear Evan Hansen.





	If I Could Tell Her

**Author's Note:**

> Hi ok, so this is probably extremely out of character, and yes I know it's ridiculous dialogue that Michelle and Peter would probably never have in reality. 
> 
> But I was listening to If I Could Tell Her from Dear Evan Hansen last night, and the line, "He thought you looked really pretty, er, it looked pretty cool, when you put indigo streaks in your hair," gave me intense flashbacks to Michelle's purple streak in Homecoming, and this resulted. 
> 
> Also, if anyone hasn't listened to the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, please do. It's glorious. (this song especially if you wanna listen to it while you read this.)

Peter Parker was entirely clueless, at least when it came to noticing things that were going on around him. It wasn’t that he was stupid, not in the slightest. He was just generally oblivious to the way people acted towards him, and it was likely due to the fact that he had a horrible attention span. He spent most classes bouncing in his seat and chewing on pen caps until he could change into red and blue spandex and swing through New York City. That being said, there was one exception to Peter’s obliviousness, and that exception was Michelle Jones, _no MJ._

It wasn’t like he spent all of his classes staring at the back of her head, or wondering what it would feel like to have her folded under his arm. He just took notice of certain things about her and reported them to Ned. He was performing a service, really. He was ensuring that Ned knew all of the necessary things about MJ that a friend should know, like how subtle and real her smile was, or how wonderful it made everyone feel. He _absolutely did not_ like her, no matter what Ned said.

Somewhere between sophomore and junior year she’d joined their friend group. None of them really knew how it happened. One day she was sitting five seats down from them in the cafeteria and hiding two rows over in Chemistry, and the next she was arguing with them about Star Wars trivia, and shouting at the TV during movie night. Either way, Peter wasn’t complaining. She was a nice addition to what was formally just a duo, and May absolutely loved having a girl over at the apartment. Peter was as oblivious as ever to the looks that May and Ned sent each other in reference to the two love-stricken teenagers that were pretending not to stare at one another out of the corner of their eyes.

It was on a cool summer evening sitting on the fire escape, when MJ casually asked him how the Spider-Manning was going, that he nearly fell ten storeys to the pavement and splatted like a bug. It was after several minutes of spluttering and horrendous excuses that MJ told him that she’d known since the Washington Monument, and that he and Ned were the world’s worst secret keepers. It was from that moment on that she was officially inducted into the Civilian Support Group of Peter Parker’s Suicidal Tendencies, as Ned dubbed it.

They were sitting on the roof of Peter and May’s apartment building watching the sunset when it happened. He and MJ had been climbing up the fire escape and watching the sun fall over the horizon in the late summer evenings as of late. Ned sometimes joined them, but more often than not, he made some half-assed excuse and winked at Peter before disappearing, despite the fact that Peter had told Ned that he absolutely _did not_ like MJ like that.

They were sitting on the edge of the building, legs dangling over the edge, and a safety cushion of webbing below their feet, _just in case._ Peter was on her right, and the sun was setting just over her left shoulder, and it was when she smiled at him that it happened. It was when she smiled at him that he was suddenly hit with the realization that he loved her, and not in a minor way. He didn’t really know how to explain it, or why it was then that he realized it. He was just hit with the sudden realization that he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life looking at her smile. He wasn’t sure how it happened. One second he was staring at her and the next he was word vomiting like there was no tomorrow. His mouth just started saying things that his brain had no control over.

“Ned thinks you’re awesome,” he found himself blurting, a blush creeping up his neck.

“He thinks I’m awesome? Ned?” she questioned as she tucked a loose curl behind her ear.

“Definitely!” Peter chirped out in response, voice cracking, unable to back out of the conversation now.

“How?” she probed, her expression unreadable.

“Well,” Peter began, running his hand through the hair at the back of his neck before continuing, “he said there’s nothing like your smile, sort of subtle and perfect, and real.” Her eyebrows pulled together, as if wondering why Ned was talking to Peter about her smile. “He said you’d never know how wonderful that smile could make someone feel.”

A beat passed between the two, as if MJ was trying to figure out what he was talking about, and Peter wondered if he should just shut up and stop talking. But in addition to having a horrible attention span, Peter also had terrible impulse control, and so, he continued.

“He knew that whenever you get bored, you scribble stars on the cuffs of your jeans,” he told her, picturing her in front of him in Physics, doodling on her pants because Ms. Warren had told her to put her book away. “and he noticed, that you still fill out the quizzes on those teen magazines,” he continued, remembering her scribbling in a teen beat from behind her book when she thought no one was watching.

A look passed between the two, a look that couldn’t be any clearer, and she realized that they weren’t talking about Ned at all. He looked out at the sun falling across the sky, took a gulp, and turned back to her, staring her directly in the eyes.

“He kept it all inside. What he sees, he hasn’t told you. And although he wanted to, he couldn’t talk to you, because he couldn’t find the way.” Peter paused, as if gauging her reaction, before deciding it was safe to continue. “But he said that if he could, he would tell you that you’re everything to him. But you’re a million worlds apart, you’re everything, you know? Where would he even start?”

“Did he say anything else?” she asked suddenly, overwhelmed with the realization she wanted to know what else he thought of her.

“About you?” Peter asked, eyes wide, as if he was expecting her to tell him to shut up.

“Never mind, I don’t really care anyways,” MJ interjected quickly, shaking her head as if to move on from the subject, but he grabbed her arm and stopped her.

“No, no, no just, no he said, he said so many things. I’m just trying to remember the best ones so, um,” Peter said all at once, stumbling through his words with nerves, trying to get what he wanted to say out before he talked himself out of it. “He thought you looked really pretty, er, it looked pretty cool, when you put indigo streaks in your hair.” He glanced at her hair, and remembered the coloured streaks that he noticed the day she’d been named captain of the decathlon team.

“He did?” she asked him, eyebrows quirking up in surprise. Peter nodded at her, and she smiled at him.

“And he wondered how you learned to dance like all the rest of the world wasn’t there.” He smiled to himself, remembering how she looked dancing at junior prom without a care in the world. “But he left what he saw unsaid. I think because he thought, what shot does he have? But he really wanted to tell you that you mean everything to him. He just doesn’t know where to start. What do you do when you’re in entirely different worlds? How do you say I love you?” he said to her all at once, pausing momentarily when he realized what he’d just admitted. Her eyes snapped up to meet his, and she was expecting him to panic, to try and back out of what he’d just said. But he didn’t. His eyes remained locked on hers.

He seemed to have stopped talking, at least for now, and she figured she should probably say something. But what do you say to all of that? How do you top that? She looked back over the horizon, noticing that the sun had almost disappeared entirely, before she turned back to him. “I think Ned’s awesome too.”

“You do?” he asked, eyes widening in surprise. It’s clear to both of them that they’re not talking about Ned. She nodded.

“Definitely,” she mimicked his words from a few minutes earlier.

“How?” he asked, mirroring her in response.

“Well,” she began, smiling a wide smile at him. “First of all, there’s nothing like his smile. It’s one of those smiles that lights up the whole room, the kind that makes everyone else smile too.” She paused, and he shot one of those aforementioned smiles at her, and she swore her heart melted. “And I know, that whenever he gets bored, he traces shapes with his hand on his knees,” she told him, remembering him tracing geometric shapes with his finger against his bouncing knee in Algebra. “And I noticed that whenever he gets nervous, he runs his hands through his hair.”

She glanced up at him, at the hand that he’d stuck in the hair at the nape of his neck. He removed it, his face colouring, but refused to break eye contact with her. “But you know, I’ve kept it all inside of my head. The things I see, I haven’t told him. But you see I’ve wanted to, I just didn’t know how to. I couldn’t find a way.” She stoped momentarily to take a deep breath, realizing that her breath was far shakier than she’d realized. She didn’t ordinarily do things like this. She didn’t say her feelings out loud. “But I think I want to tell him, tell him how he’s everything to me. I just don’t know how to start.”

“What else would you tell him, you know, if you could?” Peter asked her, a soft look in his eyes that she’d never really seen before.

“Well there’s so many things. I’m just trying to think of the best ones,” she told him, and he laughed at the way she was telling him all of this. Because of course MJ found a way to mock him while she was telling him all of this. She wouldn’t be MJ if she didn’t. “I thought he looked really good, er sorry, _it_ looked really good,” she gave him a deadpan look, “when he grew his hair out extra long.” She glanced at his short locks, thinking fondly two months previous, when he’d refused to cut his hair.

“You did?” he asked her, ruffling his hand through the slightly longer hair on the top of his head. She nodded at him, and he grinned

“And I wondered why he decided to fight off guys on the street, instead of aliens coming from the sky,” she continued, in reference to Peter’s insistence to ‘fight for the little guy’, or so he put it. If there was any doubt at all before, it was clear now that they were talking about Peter. “But I’ve left what I’ve seen unsaid. I think because I thought, what shot would someone like me have, with someone who can do all of that? But now I really want to tell him that he means everything to me. But we’re completely different people, and I just don’t know how to start. How do you say I love you?”

His eyes snapped up at her and there was a moment where they were both just sitting there staring at one another. Perhaps because they were friends. They’d never been anything more than friends, and yet, they’d both just admitted that they loved one another. But then he smiled at her, and her heart melted, and she smiled at him, and he felt his beat rapidly in his chest, and it was in that moment that they knew that they were no longer a million worlds apart, and they were just about to start, and there wasn’t anything they couldn’t tell each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated, and please let me know if I made any errors while writing this. I did reread it, but it was written at 4 o'clock in the morning after I'd been awake for 42 hours and surviving on nothing but coffee and sugar. 
> 
> Also, if anyone wants to come scream at me on tumblr, please do. 
> 
> @emotionalsupportspider


End file.
